


Strategic Planning

by random_chick



Category: Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:24:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's time for another brainstorming session. Sitterson <i>hates</i> these damn things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strategic Planning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snack_size](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snack_size/gifts).



Every few years, there was a brainstorming meeting. After all, the same creatures could only be used for so long. They needed new creatures, new possibilities. Some of the best creations had come out of these brainstorming meetings.

Except this meeting involved Hadley, and that kind of thing never ended well.

“You know what we need?” This was from Hadley. “We need a tree.” A little too much excitement in his voice.

“Say what now?” Sitterson arched an eyebrow. “What on God’s green earth are you babbling about?” Did he even really want to know? Probably not.

“A tree,” Hadley repeated slowly, as though he were talking to a very small child. “C’mon, think about it. It’d be perfect.”

“And what kind of tree are you thinking about?” Sitterson had a pinched look on his face, as though Hadley were giving him a headache. In fact, Hadley _was_ giving him a headache. He often felt that Hadley didn’t take things seriously enough. This was no help.

“Pine tree.” At Sitterson’s look, Hadley held his hands up in mock surrender. “I’m _kidding_ , Sitterson. Jeez, lighten up.”

Sitterson just gave Hadley another Look. “Get serious,” he said. “This is important. We need just the right creatures here.”

“The old ones _are_ getting tiresome,” Hadley agreed. It didn’t really matter how boring the creatures were or weren’t, he supposed, but it did make for uninteresting viewing for the staff time after time. “Hence, tree.”

“Oh, knock it off with the goddamn tree,” Sitterson snapped, much to the amusement of the others sitting around the conference table.

“No, listen, hear me out,” Hadley insisted. “Tree could be interesting. Not, like, regular old tree you find in your backyard, but... okay, you ever read Lord of the Rings?”

“Once,” Sitterson said, looking at Hadley as though he weren’t sure whether or not the younger man had lost his mind. “Why?”

“Think killer Ent.”

Sitterson paused for a second. He hated to admit it, but Hadley might just have had something there. “Go on.”

Hadley continued. “Ents always creeped the fuck out of me, man. Talking trees, what the fuck? But anyway... killer tree. Except obviously ours won’t talk, because trees _can’t_ talk.”

Oh, God, Hadley was rambling. Sitterson gritted his teeth and looked at the other man. “No, they can’t,” he said in a voice as free of patronizing as possible -- which wasn’t very. What? He was just giving it back in return. Hadley could be a patronizing bastard sometimes.

“So yeah, killer tree,” Hadley said. “Come on, it’d be _awesome_. Living killer tree. It’s perfect!” Clearly someone was attached to his own idea.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Sitterson grumbled before writing it down on the whiteboard in front of him. “Okay, who else has one? Come on, people, we need options to present to the board. If we just have one, we’ll get laughed out of the organization. Madrid’s already got half a dozen viable options, so I hear.”

“Fuck Madrid,” Hadley said. “And... seriously? Madrid? They’re, like -- ”

“Yes, Hadley, we know,” Sitterson said, wondering yet again how the hell he’d gotten nominated to be in charge of this particular group. “They’re always behind us when it comes to this sort of thing. You don’t need to tell us.”

Disgruntled, Hadley shifted in his seat. “So we have a tree,” he said. “Tree is good. I like the tree. But we need more than just the tree if we don’t want Madrid to rub it in our faces. And it needs to be something... different.” Because the tree was something out of a horror movie, or something like it, and that was a good thing. A useful thing. But also not entirely a helpful thing. “Something... innocent.”

“A ballerina.”

Heads simultaneously turned towards the person who’d spoken. Wendy Lin shrank back slightly in her seat, uncomfortable with the sudden attention.

“Ah, Lin,” Hadley said cheerfully. “And what’s _your_ suggestion, hm? Pray tell, enlighten us.”

“Don’t be an ass, Hadley,” Lin said, narrowing her eyes at him for a second. “You want something different, right? Something innocent? Then how about something from a young girl’s childhood?’

“What’ve you got?” Sitterson asked, intrigued. Lin might’ve gotten on his nerves more than a little, and she might’ve been part of that damn chem department, but she wasn’t so bad really. At least, she was better than Hadley most of the time. Not that he’d ever tell her that.

“Like I said. A ballerina.” She looked a little uncertain now.

“The hell?” Hadley looked at Lin. “You’ve been smoking some of that stuff you guys cook up down in the lab, haven’t you? Why a ballerina?”

“It’s something innocent, something simple, something pure,” Lin said, nervously tucking her hair back behind her ears and wishing she’d had time that morning to twist it up into a bun or something so she couldn’t fiddle with it. “What little girl doesn’t want to be a ballerina when she grows up? I think every girl goes through at least a brief period where it’s what they want.”

“And how does that help us?” Hadley asked. “It doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does,” Lin insisted. “Because it’s something we can use.”

“How?”

“I think I get where she’s coming from,” Sitterson cut in, not in the mood to deal with Hadley’s teasing Lin anymore. sometimes he could only take so much of it -- which was funny in a twisted way, given that he himself gave her just as much crap sometimes. “We take it and we warp it somehow so that it’s _not_ pure any longer.”

“Exactly!” Lin said, relieved that Sitterson was at least trying to listen to her -- she had no delusions that either he or Hadley actually liked her and her team. “I don’t know what we’ll do to it, that’s not my department. But we take it and we make it the stuff of nightmares. Make it something that no young girl would want to be and there you have it, one creature we didn’t have before.”

“And we want to keep it as recognizable as possible,” Sitterson mused. “Because we have more than enough creatures already on the roster who’ll be unrecognizable.”

“So...” And then it occurred to Lin. “Mutate its face somehow. Make it something that boggles the mind. The kind of thing that you look at it and you just can’t process it, that’s how horrible it is.”

“I guess ‘demented ballerina’ goes up on the board,” Hadley said grudgingly. It wasn’t the greatest idea he’d ever heard, but for someone from chem, it was pretty okay. Creative, too.

Sitterson scribbled it down and the meeting moved on.

Half an hour later, everything had wound down for the night -- they’d be meeting again in the morning to make sure nobody else had any brilliant ideas before submitting what they had -- and it was just Sitterson and Hadley looking at the board.

“Lin’s idea was... all right,” Hadley offered. “Not bad for a girl from the chem department, anyway.”

“I liked it,” Sitterson said.

“At least she didn’t suggest a unicorn.”

“No, that was Madrid.”

“Fuck!”


End file.
